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Hey, welcome back everybody. Hey, guess what? We have a brand new podcast format for you to check out today. I am super excited about this. This is genuinely one of the most enjoyable podcast discussions that I’ve had, and I hope that you all enjoy it as well.
Here’s the deal. [00:01:00] I’m calling this, The Testing Psychologist Happy Hour. What we’re doing is I’ve invited four of my amazing colleagues to come on the show and just have a free-flowing discussion about all things testing, business, life, whatever we might stumble into.
And for a first go-round, I think it turned out really well. To be honest, even if this flops as a podcast format, it was a blast. It was amazing to connect with these folks. So that’s what we’re doing today.
Let me tell you a little bit about our guests. If you’re longtime listeners or Facebook group members, I think you’ll recognize some of these names. So I have Dr. Andres Chou, Dr. Laura Sanders, Dr. Stephanie Nelson, and Dr. Chris Barnes here for the happy hour discussion today.
[00:02:00] I’m not going to do separate bios for each of them because I think that would take forever. So suffice it to say, you can find each of them in the show notes, you can look them up and you can converse with any of them in the Facebook group if you would like, but they are all incredible psychologists, wonderful professionals, and even more incredible people.So honored to have them all here to have this discussion which touches on all kinds of topics. We talk about the state of affairs here in month 10 of the pandemic in terms of our practices, we talk about self-care and how we’re doing that, we dive into a discussion on neurodiversity and inclusivity in our field, we talk about what measures we like and don’t like, we talk [00:03:00] about a lot of stuff.
This is a really great discussion. I hope that, like I said, you enjoy it as much as I did. As always with any of these new formats, I encourage you to shoot me a message. Let me know, did you like it? Did you not like it? And we’ll see where this goes. So without too much more delay, I want to bring you this wide-ranging conversation with four amazing testing psychologists.
Hey, welcome to all of you to the podcast. How are you? Chris, how are you?
Dr. Chris: Good. It’s great to be here. I’m coming to you from Kalamazoo, Southwest Michigan, where it’s 17 degrees right now. It’s not very fun at [00:04:00] all, but I’m in my guestroom, so that makes it a little bit better.
Here in Kalamazoo, I have two practices, testing forward. Lots of cool experiences. Lots of learning happening over the last few years. I am a self-identified OG of The Testing Psychologist community and have been around for a while. I’m super happy to be here.
Dr. Sharp: Awesome. Y’all are giving us a run for our money with the temperature. I think you’re lower than we are this morning, but that’s what we do here in the wintertime as Laura knows. Laura moved here from Texas but Stephanie’s next. Stephanie, welcome.
Dr. Stephanie: Hi, I’m Stephanie Nelson. I have a pediatric neuropsychology practice here in Seattle where it’s temperate all the time. It’s 41 degrees. I’m super excited to be here on a Friday morning.
Dr. Sharp: Glad to have you as always. I think we have all OGs of The Testing Psychologist [00:05:00] community on Facebook.
Dr. Stephanie: Did you just call us all old?
Dr. Chris: Original, not old.
Dr. Stephanie: All right.
Dr. Sharp: Original. Laura, how are you?
Dr. Laura: I’m okay. I’m not enjoying the weather. Having moved from Texas, this has been a little bit of a shock, but I still have a practice in Texas through Tele-health and then also seeing people here in Colorado. So running two practices, paying for two office spaces, using none of them.
Dr. Sharp: Amazing. Fun fact, Laura and I have offices 3 miles from one another, and we haven’t seen each other in person since she moved to Fort Collins because of COVID.
Dr. Laura: It was before that, it was crazy. How is this life?
Dr. Sharp: That’s nuts. I’m looking forward to the day when I can sit across from you again.
Dr. Laura: Me too.
Dr. Sharp: But we’ve got this in the meantime. [00:06:00] Thanks for being here. Andres, welcome.
Dr. Andres: Hello. Good to be here. I’m Andres Chou. I have been running a private practice since we last spoke. I’ve gone full-time into private practice in Pasadena, California, near LA.
Dr. Sharp: That’s amazing.
Dr. Andres: It’s been great. I wish I started earlier as everyone in private practice says. I’m a little bit different from most people; I do mostly therapy and a little testing on the side, but my testing is mainly with adults in personality-based things.
The weather here is, like you guys, freezing. I’m going to be that person from California and say it’s a cold 50 degrees. So it’s terrible.
Dr. Sharp: I have a lot of friends in LA and I do this weird thing, I don’t know, maybe y’all do this too, but on my weather app, I have the weather locations of where my friends and family [00:07:00] live. For some reason, it’s important to me to know what the weather is where they are, and LA is one of those places. So every morning, I look at the LA weather in the winter, shake my head, and close my eyes for a second.
Dr. Andres: We totally take it for granted here. When I lived in Chicago, this would be t-shirt weather. I’m freezing right now.
Dr. Chris: It’s 50 there and you’re wearing a sweatshirt and it’s 17 here and I’m wearing a t-shirt. This is great.
Dr. Andres: I have a heater and a space heater on right now. It’s ridiculous.
Dr. Stephanie: And then Chris has a ceiling fan on.
Dr. Chris: I got to keep the air moving.
Dr. Sharp: Right. I love it. I interviewed Joe Sanok yesterday for my podcast, he’s a Michigan guy, but they’re traveling. They did that thing though, where they bought an RV and are driving their family around the country like people are doing right now.
And so he’s in California right now. He’s recording [00:08:00] outside and was wearing a puffy coat, a down coat. I’m like, Joe, what is it there? He’s like, I don’t know, maybe like 60 in the shade. Come on, man. This is awesome. I’m so glad to have all y’all here.
As we floated this idea, it seemed like a dream to have all of you in the same place just to talk about business, testing and life but here we are. We made it work with the schedules and I’m excited. I’m curious, I just want to know what do y’all’s lives look like right now between COVID, home and practice? How’s everybody doing at this moment in time?
Dr. Laura: My kids finally went back to school, so I’m not homeschooling and seeing people at the same time. So that’s been really interesting and nice. [00:09:00] I am all telehealth, all sitting right here in this beautiful small room that I’ve converted into my office. Every day I’m seeing usually one, maybe two people. That’s what I do. I don’t leave here.
Dr. Sharp: Are you doing testing over telehealth?
Dr. Laura: Limited testing depending on the case.
Dr. Sharp: True.
Dr. Laura: Lots of rating scales.
Dr. Sharp: A lot of rating scales. That’s for sure. It was a blessing we’re in the same school district obviously or maybe not obviously, but we are. My kids went back too and it’s been amazing.
Dr. Laura: How much freedom?
Dr. Sharp: I know. My wife was the one who has been hanging with them during the day. She’s also a therapist and so she moved all our clients to the evening and does three, four, five, six, or whatever most nights.
[00:10:00] Anyway, when they went back to school, she all of a sudden gained 25 hours a week. She’s the happiest person ever right now, which makes the rest of us happy too. What about the rest of you? What’s life look like? Stephanie, how’s it going in Seattle?Dr. Stephanie: I’m an introvert, so I haven’t really noticed. Has anything changed in the last year?
Dr. Chris: I see your dream come true.
Dr. Stephanie: Pretty much. Still, I’m doing testing. I’m doing a lot of the intakes and feedback. All of those are over telehealth of course. A lot of my business now is consulting work. And so that’s all over telehealth. So mostly I just sit in this chair but I do go in one day a week to do testing where I have the child seated 10 feet away from me, basically, with all the precautions in place. I have been doing testing like that since maybe about June.
And then on the weekends, my [00:11:00] husband and I still take our RV out and that dream you are talking about, that’s Joe Sanok’s doing, that’s what I would love to be able to do, Some mobile testing situation. I haven’t quite got there yet.
Dr. Sharp: Oh, that’s amazing. I see all the pics that you post. You do a lot of wildlife photography.
Dr. Stephanie: It’s a bit of a hobby, lo-fi wildlife photography. Like if you want a blurry picture of a deer, I am definitely your girl.
Dr. Sharp: There is a market for them.
Dr. Chris: Who’s downplaying that? I saw some of her photos and I said, what camera are you using? She’s like, I don’t know. It’s just some point in shoot. I’m like, where are you getting those shots?
Dr. Laura: Agreed, Stephanie knows all the things.
Dr. Sharp: This is true.
Dr. Stephanie: Andres, you’ve started a practice in the middle of COVID, what has that been like launching during this?
Dr. Andres: Somewhat say that is a bad idea and what are you doing? But it’s been amazing. [00:12:00] We had a tough decision to make. I was working a full-time job and teaching psychological assessment and then things shifted my position there and it was becoming impossible.
I can’t imagine you guys with multiple kids in grade school. My kid’s 18 months. And so I was watching him, seeing clients in the evenings or on the days my wife doesn’t work, and then trying to hold meetings during his naps. It was just too much. So we just talked about it and private practice was the way to go for the time being, but it’s been amazing.
On the therapy end, there’s just a huge need and also some of the best work I’ve ever done in therapy. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know how many of you guys do therapy, but it has been phenomenal. I think we all can collectively understand each [00:13:00] other, like what’s going on in all of us and just the intimacy of telehealth it’s, I thought it would be weird and it was at first, but then it became rather intimate. That’s how most therapists would describe it, that you’re really up close to someone.
Dr. Sharp: And in their home too. That’s what we found, seeing into people’s homes has added a whole layer of complexity and intimacy that we didn’t really anticipate.
Dr. Andres: Or in their cars or walking on the street sometimes and you have to explain to them but you go with it.
Dr. Stephanie: My husband is a group therapist and he runs men’s groups. He was worried about what it was going to be like having men’s groups over telehealth, but he said the same thing, like that little bit of extra distance has actually made the groups more intimate. People are more willing to share and the men are bonding more. It’s really amazing.
Dr. Chris: There’s no doubt things are absolutely changing.
[00:14:00] Dr. Sharp: Practice-wise, I’m curious to see where we end up after this. We all talk about going back to normal, but I don’t know. At least in our practice, I could see telehealth always being an option; giving people the option to do telehealth intakes and feedback if they want instead of defaulting to being in person. What are you thinking when you …?Dr. Andres: Can I jump on that? Because where I am in LA, when we would do assessments, a lot of times we talked before I do these clergy assessments, and a lot of these denominations are pretty scattered. And so I would feel so bad about making clients drive like two hours to do a feedback.
At the time, we didn’t know the telehealth rules that well yet, and some of our team was researching it but now maybe they could drive out still for the testing part. I still rather do that in person as much as I [00:15:00] can but the feedback, it makes so much sense. Absolutely, I think it’s completely transformed everything.
California’s pretty large, say you specialize in something and you can have them just come in for testing for one day and then say they’re in Northern California, do the feedback that way too. There so many things you do, especially with the psychology stuff. I don’t know any of that stuff, because we’re not a psychology expertise but I’m really excited about what could happen with this.
Dr. Stephanie: Chris, what has it been like for you?
Dr. Chris: It’s been complicated. I was probably 75% assessment-heavy heavy and when COVID started to leash itself onto our environment, I stopped just about everything. It was interesting timing because therapy clients were really reaching out and I was 100% therapy for, [00:16:00] other than December, I haven’t seen a testing client since last March. And I was seeing 30 clients a week with therapy, which is completely masochistic, but there was a need and I had the time and energy to do it. And it was good.
I think that I’ve done some of my best therapeutic work over the last year. And maybe that’s just me wrapping some narrative around it, but I felt very effective over the last year just doing great therapeutic work. I’m just now starting to get back into the teleassessment side of things, which has just been an interesting.
It’s been this like, do I do it this way? What happens if I don’t do these things I’m so used to and what implications does that mean? Oh my God, I’m waking up at two o’clock in the morning with panic attacks. I didn’t give an IQ test. What does that mean? It doesn’t even mean anything. So it’s been really complicated for me but it’s been a tremendous learning experience.
Dr. Andres: Can I ask about that? Two comments or questions that come up as you say that [00:17:00] Chris is that one, I’m starting up my practice and I’m trying to decide how much testing should I do? should I make it half and half? Most people tell me that’s pretty hard to do. It sounds like you were doing 75, 25. The first question is, was that by design or that just happened?
And then the second part is, I’m hearing a lot of psychologists go like, I haven’t done testing for years and now we have this pandemic. I don’t feel comfortable with in-person or even telehealth. I don’t know if I could go back to it, but you seem to be able to do that. Maybe you could speak to what your thoughts are on going back to doing more therapy because I think most of us were trained on some levels.
Dr. Chris: Absolutely. Therapy has always been what’s driven me to the field. I’m not sure why necessarily, that’s where I cut my teeth [00:18:00] and then I fell into the assessment world. And that’s where I was like, oh wait, this is pretty cool. Like datum, what’s that? Let’s jump on this board.
I got enthusiastically involved with the testing side of things, but I’ve always wanted to keep both hands in the game because I’m risk-averse, and so I want to make sure I’ve always got options. I enjoy the therapeutic side and the testing sides, but I always made sure I was maintaining a caseload on each side.
As I started to grow my practice here, it became very testing-heavy. And so COVID came around and I was like, what happens? But at that point, there was not necessarily the need for the testing that I do for a lot of assessment. There was a tremendous need for therapy. So it very organically transitioned into a therapy heavy caseload right now.
Dr. Sharp: How long [00:19:00] before that had it been since you were really doing therapy, since you were immersed in that world?
Dr. Chris: I’d estimate 3 or 4 years.
Dr. Sharp: What was it like coming back?
Dr. Chris: It was refreshing. There was something exciting about it. It was like, wow, I forgot I had this skill and not that it’s even good necessarily, but it was just very fulfilling and people were responding well to it.
Dr. Sharp: I think if I were in your position, I don’t know, there’s something to be said for taking a long break and then coming back with fresh eyes and a different stage of life. I could see that being really nice to dive back into it and get reacquainted and start to get better at it again.
Dr. Stephanie: Jeremy, what is your mix right now? What’s happening with your practice?
Dr. Sharp: My schedule is ridiculous. I probably spend [00:20:00] 50% of the time doing practice admin, direction and business development, probably 40% doing podcasting consulting stuff. I do one assessment a month, maybe two, if it’s a friend or something like VIP thing. So then maybe that’s 8% and then I have one therapy client who I have seen for 12 years, maybe 10 since way back since I graduated, who comes back intermittently, but he’s back now. So I have one therapy client.
Dr. Andres: You’re barely a psychologist then, that’s what you’re saying.
Dr. Sharp: Barely. Exactly. I’m getting further and further. My employees are always asking, they’re like, when are you going to stop doing clinical work? Thus far, the answer is never. I love testing and still learning new things and it [00:21:00] seems hard to get better.
Dr. Laura: It’s got to be nice to have a boss who knows that side of things too. I wouldn’t want you to stop, if you were my boss.
Dr. Sharp: Thank you.
Dr. Stephanie: Laura, did you say you have two businesses that you’re doing?
Dr. Laura: It’s the same business in two locations, essentially.
Dr. Chris: You’ll find that this is Laura’s style to downplay everything.
Dr. Laura: I build up my business in Dallas-Fort Worth area because we lived there and then we moved last May. And moving during a pandemic, I do not recommend because I still don’t know anyone. I still don’t know what the inside of my kid’s school looks like.
It’s been really challenging, but it’s been interesting because of all the telehealth stuff, I’ve been able to keep up my business in Texas and still see people there maintain those [00:22:00] relationships. I’ve cut back on who I’m seeing, so I’m only seeing little bitty people, 18 months to 5-ish for autism assessments and then also seeing 18 and up. So I’ve cut out that whole chunk in the middle because I’m not doing achievement, IQ, heavy stuff.
I’m really looking forward to getting back to that because as a school psychologist, having that background like that, those are my people, that’s where I’m comfortable, but the pandemic has made me become more comfortable with other things.
Dr. Sharp: Were you selling your practice in Texas at some point, or were you trying to?
Dr. Laura: I am still in the process. I have a person in mind who as soon as she passes the licensing exam, it’s all hers.
Dr. Sharp: No pressure person, whoever you are.
Dr. Chris: I’ll buy it right now to [00:23:00] him.
Dr. Laura: Ultimately, I’d like to get rid of that practice. I’d like to sell that and then be able to focus more on Colorado.
Dr. Sharp: Are you at liberty to talk at all about that process of selling your practice? What’s that been like? If anybody wanted to do, how do you even do that?
Dr. Laura: It’s been a huge pain. I have a business broker I’ve been working with since well before the pandemic. And so the valuation, he helped establish that. He’s been advertising and fielding all the calls. I have had a lot of interest in the business, but it hasn’t been anyone who is qualified to do what I do because there’s not another psychologist who has my experience.
So it’ll a therapist who wants to buy the practice, but then they don’t know my piece of it, so [00:24:00] they would have to outsource it. There just been a lot of weirdness around exactly who can buy the business but it’s been interesting. Just speaking, honestly, the valuation, I was at my top. I had psychometricians, we were doing 4 or 5 evaluations a day sometimes. We were moving and then COVID.
Dr. Sharp: Was the evaluation based on the top or the not top?
Dr. Laura: It was based on the top. And so then we’ve had to adjust that because all the interests were pre-COVID and now as things have not gone as well, things are fine, it’s just not as profitable. So it’s been interesting.
Dr. Sharp: I hear that. Chris, did you sell up any of your practices? I feel like you’ve done a lot with your practices [00:25:00] over the past two years.
Dr. Chris: There’s been lots of movement in lots of different directions. It’s incredibly complicated. This is probably not the best forum to have that conversation, but there’s been a lot of learning along the way. There’s no doubt about it.
I can certainly appreciate what Laura is saying that it’s such an emotional roller coaster. And then you think you have a plan and then you get kicked in the knees, and then you have a better plan and someone wants it, and then you’re like, wait a minute, I wasn’t thinking clearly, I need to renegotiate. It’s pretty messy.
Dr. Andres: As you guys are talking about this, I don’t know if this is a total tangent, but the thing that has been on my mind, especially because I just recently left my job at a graduate program is the idea of talking about business in our training programs. Even in the Facebook group, that comes up all the time.
A few weeks ago, someone said they’re $500,000 in debt. [00:26:00] I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t even imagine that. I’m curious what y’all guys’ thoughts are and your experience of the teaching of the business side of any practice or anything in your own programs?
Dr. Laura: There was nothing.
Dr. Andres: Nothing.
Dr. Laura: Zero
Dr. Andres: I’m curious what are your thoughts on how we can change that, if that’s even possible? Our programs are pretty intense to begin with. So just thinking about this the other day.
Dr. Sharp: I was disappointed. Our program had, I think it was called professional development seminar. It was an eight-hour thing on a Saturday later in our program. Maybe it would have been a good experience at a different point in my life, but the professor who taught it was like, see as many clients as possible, work 40 to 50 hours a week billing 40 to 50 hours a week, invest in real [00:27:00] estate and then sail off into the sunset.
That was our professional development, because that was the path that he had taken, which worked really well, but different era. And then after that, they had me teach the professional seminar once and then it got canceled. I guess I did a terrible job. And that was 8 years ago or something. So it hasn’t been back.
Dr. Andres: You gave away too many secrets and you destroy the economy there.
Dr. Sharp: Thank you.
Dr. Andres: I think you’re speaking to something there too because I remember as a graduate student, we would have some of those classes and first of all the people who taught them, they’re doing it because sometimes they’re passionate about it, sometimes they just need a little extra income.
The people who are making tons of money doing this stuff, they’re not going to have time to go [00:28:00] teach some graduate class eight o’clock at night or something like that. And then as a graduate student, you’re not thinking about that stuff just yet.
Dr. Chris: You’re also taught that you’re never going to make money as a psychologist. I remember my graduate program is like, all that private practice stuff, that’s for nights and weekends, but you got to go work at the university or you got to do this or whatever.
It was spoken, but it was still unspoken truths that were communicated. So it was really interesting to think about, well, there are so many different possibilities out there and we don’t have to believe it necessary.
Dr. Andres: Our program, maybe because it was a faith-based program and there’s all that stuff about helping people that we’re supposed to do, we got a different message. We had some professors that would say, I drive a BMW, but then the way we received that was like, oh, we don’t want to be like him. We want to help people.
And then now that we’re out, we’re like, oh men, I feel the [00:29:00] BMW will be nice and not having that will be nice and all that kind of stuff. It’s tricky. So in our program, there were some messages of that, but we couldn’t receive it.
Dr. Sharp: I hate that they opposed, that they get presented as mutually exclusive.
Dr. Stephanie: I don’t even think it was on the radar of my graduate program. I think the model was just write 30-page reports that you get paid $150 an hour to write, and somehow it will all work out.
Jeremy, when you started your podcast, were you more interested in filling that hole on the business side, or did you want to help people find other experts in the field? What drove you to start that?
Dr. Sharp: Originally, it came from the business motivation because I taught that professional development seminar and I love that stuff. I’d done informal lectures on that stuff and [00:30:00] guest lectures over the years. So that’s where it came from initially, but then I figured out like people really like hearing from experts too.
Dr. Stephanie: That is why now you alternate?
Dr. Sharp: Exactly.
Dr. Andres: That’s a good thing that they stopped offering that course, or you’d be teaching some night courses and we wouldn’t have this right now.
Dr. Sharp: Again, a great reframe. This is a great group to talk about this though, because there are so many different… I think we’ve all done different models of figuring out how to be in private practice and make money doing different things. Like you said earlier, Stephanie, in passing, that you’re doing a lot of consulting these days, what I took from that is that it’s been enough to replace some of your clinical work. Is that right?
Dr. Stephanie: It has. [00:31:00] I’ve cut my clinical work in half now. And so I do have clinical, half consulting and it’s been amazing. One of the things I’m sure we’ll touch on today as we’re discussing is the idea of burnout and replacing doing the work with something that puts me in a different lens has just refreshed everything. It’s just so fun.
I talk with people who are just starting. I talk with experts and I learned so much from them and yet I still somehow earn money. It’s incredible. It’s been really neat.
Dr. Sharp: That is so awesome.
Dr. Andres: We met after the pandemic and after you did the first episode on the podcast fan here. Were you doing your consulting work before the podcast [00:32:00] episode or that’s when you started?
Dr. Stephanie: Having that deadline was a great incentive to get the website set up and things started. So it actually happened literally at that moment, that’s when it started.
Dr. Andres: Both of you guys are saying that you guys were offering amazing resources for free to the public and it actually resulted in more business. There’s really something about that. I forget what the term is in marketing. It’s like a lead or whatever like that but there’s something to be said about that. Maybe the rest of you, Laura and Chris, maybe you could speak if there’s any experience of that on your end with the practice.
Dr. Chris: I think along with similar grounds the idea of burnout and then utilizing your skills and other avenues is so incredibly important because it’s new and it’s exciting. I recently started consulting on a marketing team for a startup with a wine app. [00:33:00] I’m a wine person but it’s so interesting to take the information that I’ve gotten along the way in marketing my own business and all of these things, and then utilizing it in a different environment.
I’m not a marketing genius, not even close, but to utilize the skills and could riff on ideas with people in different industries and still get paid for it, there’s just something really fulfilling about that. The money is not the important piece, it’s like, let’s try this idea.
I can take my psychological experience and my understanding in my training, and so how do we work this? How do we work through these problems? How do we market to different populations? et cetera. And so it’s intellectually stimulating in a very different way, but you’re using the same skill.
And so COVID has burnt me out way bad. I had to do something. So [00:34:00] this fell into my lap and there you go. And so it’s speaking to exactly what Stephanie was talking about. It’s the same skillset, it’s just utilized in a different way.
Dr. Stephanie: And that’s another thing we don’t talk about in our training programs a lot is how applicable our skillset is to other areas of life and other things we could be doing. Most of us just think we’re going to be doing testing or therapy, whatever our mix is forever. And then you find out we have all these skills that apply to other areas of life. It is exciting and energizing.
Dr. Chris: Especially when you can meld two hobbies together. It’s doubly rewarding. That’s really cool.
Dr. Stephanie: Neuropsychology is my hobby, so I am. What are the rest of you guys doing to avoid burnout?
Dr. Andres: There’s a premise that everyone’s avoiding burnout in that statement, which may or may not be accurate.
[00:35:00] Dr. Sharp: I am literally burned out right now.Dr. Laura: I’m trying to be more intentional in my scheduling and only doing one person or two people a day, and trying to turn around reports super-fast so that I’m not dwelling on it. It’s not lingering. Other than that, I can’t wait till I can get back into a choir. I cannot wait till I can meet some people. I cannot wait to just leave my house. So I’m just waiting and burning.
Dr. Stephanie: While waiting, can you explain to me the part about getting reports out super-fast. I was wondering if maybe just look for a friend?
Dr. Chris: That’s a thing? That actually exists?
Dr. Laura: Yeah. The way that I’ve been doing it is at night while I’m watching a show, I’ve prepped the report with all of the backgrounds and as many rating scales as I’ve got back. And so that template is there and it’s already [00:36:00] partially completed. So while I’m talking to the person, I’m filling it in, and then I’m getting it done, hopefully within the rest of that day, and then proofing the next day and I am cycling through.
Dr. Stephanie: Amazing.
Dr. Sharp: Remarkable.
Dr. Laura: It doesn’t always work.
Dr. Sharp: Side question that’s equally important, what show are you watching right now?
Dr. Laura: I just finished watching the Search Party on HBO Max, two thumbs up.
Dr. Sharp: Sweet. I’ll put that in the show notes. Awesome. What about the rest of you? What are you doing to stay sane? Again, there’s an assumption there.
Dr. Andres: There’s a lot of things I want to actively do more like some more exercise. It doesn’t help that my practice is [00:37:00] even closer to my house now. I could walk to it but I don’t, I drive. It’s ridiculous, like a 1-minute commute but just some really simple practical things.
I’m on Facebook a lot, but it’s just to be enough The Testing Psychologist group, but just trying to limit my social media intake. My gosh, that’s huge. I tell my clients this all the time. It’s so hard. It’s so addicting. That’s stuff messes with you. It keeps you locked in. The more emotion it brings out in you, the more you’re going to react to stuff. All those algorithms are doing stuff to us.
The research is still emerging in this but just noticing that the weeks that I’m focused on my practice, the things that I’m excited about, spending time with my family and not [00:38:00] spending time with strangers somewhere off, arguing about who the secretary of education is for some strange reason. That’s been one way that I’ve been trying to help with the burnout and things like that.
And this is a tricky thing in private practice too, that I’m learning but I actually find it easier with my full-time job. This is my full-time job now. My other job was just reducing my work to my time in the office. I have the luxury of being able to come into my office here, but that’s been tremendous. It’s like, okay, if I’m in the office, I’m doing work. Home is for home. Just those simple things that we tell people all the time, but it goes such a long way.
Dr. Stephanie: You brought up such a good point that we’re all figuring out how to balance our practices over [00:39:00] Zoom, but that human connection with our colleagues is hard. We have the Facebook group, but staying on Facebook for too long really does corrode your soul. So how are people staying connected with colleagues during this time?
Dr. Chris: It’s hard because, at least my experience is everyone’s still trying to maintain clinical levels and to really produce good work. And for many of the people that I’ve had conversations with, doing therapy is almost therapeutic in of itself, because it’s pulling us out of our own stuff and being available and opening space for other people as well. So Slack is my friend right now. It’s asynchronous necessarily because we’re not really communicating in the moment, but Slack has been really good.
Dr. Stephanie: Explain it for those of us who don’t know what that is?
Dr. Chris: Slack is like multiple text threads in chapters.
[00:40:00] Dr. Sharp: What a way to explain it. It’s like a chat app.Dr. Stephanie: Thank you, Jeremy.
Dr. Sharp: For work.
Dr. Stephanie: So can we have one?
Dr. Sharp: Sure. I’ll start one right now. I’ll Slack you in just a second.
Dr. Stephanie: Perfect.
Dr. Andres: Chris, you’re speaking to something there, this is hard for the people who don’t do mainly assessment and testing but I enjoy my time with my clients. It’s the limited amount of human interaction that, I’m an extrovert, so that’s part of it.
The moments when I don’t have sessions, the times that I have for my administrative stuff, it’s when I have to sit with men. We’re really isolated right now in this pandemic. I was just talking to my wife about that yesterday, about that’s when it settles in a little bit. [00:41:00] I think it’s easy as testing psychologists to just try to ignore that but that’s telling us something about what we need at the moment.
That’s why consultation groups are huge for me. I have regular groups that we meet right now on Zoom and we sit around and talk about nothing, it’s just so good. It’s exhausting too being on Zoom all the time, but just that little bit goes a long way.
I’m curious for those that do mainly testing though, what is that like for you? Because a lot of the time when you’re doing an assessment, you’re mainly just writing reports and interpreting data. How does that work?
Dr. Sharp: For us, like Chris said, our chat rooms in our [00:42:00] practice have exploded over the past few months because people are just going nuts in there. The consultation stuff, there’s been a lot more messaging back and forth about cases and what we’re thinking about and how we conceptualize things.
Dr. Andres: Is the amount of work that you’re doing right now, Jeremy, I’m curious because your practice is crazy. I’m wondering if the intensity of it is still the same, more or less since COVID has kicked off.
Dr. Sharp: It’s just been insane because right at the beginning of COVID was when we decided to expand into a local pediatric practice as well. So I’ve hired 5 people during the pandemic into another location. We had to figure out the remote testing [00:43:00] piece or not. I have decided to double down on the podcast in June, which was great in June when I wasn’t doing anything. And then come November, it turned out to maybe a less good decision, but it’s all been fun.
I’ve almost conceptualized this pandemic as a really long silent meditation retreat in the sense that I see my moods and my behaviors; there’s a lot of waves. There are moments and weeks of being isolated, and then there are moments where I’m like, I like this and it’s great to be home. It’s like watching how I react to all this. I don’t know if any of y’all have experienced that, but with such a duration…
Dr. Laura: That’s a really good point. I hadn’t thought about it in that way, but I have spent a lot of time with myself lately because there’s no one [00:44:00] else.
Dr. Sharp: And even see all that like reacting to the kids or my partner or work or whatever, it’s just like, this is interesting.
Dr. Andres: I heard this by Andrew Schulz, he’s a comedian. He has a Netflix thing now. It’s pretty crude so not suitable for work people. He said the statement and really stopped me that COVID has exposed all our pre-existing conditions. So if you were overworked before COVID, you definitely feel it now. If you’re doing work that you didn’t enjoy before COVID, you had to really re-examine it.
Going back to the question of what’s it like to start a practice, it got me to really think what kind of work do I want to do because it’s so much harder when we’re doing it during a pandemic and you’re not enjoying it.
[00:45:00] Dr. Sharp: Absolutely.Dr. Stephanie: A colleague who survived postdoc with me, we used to joke that postdoc turns you into a caricature of yourself, like whatever your leading trait is, postdoc concentrated that and that’s what it made you into. There’s been some ways that COVID, I can feel, does that to me, but I’m also hearing people say that they’re finding some bright sides inside this terribleness. Has anybody else seen anything good coming out of COVID or feel like lessons learned that we’re getting from this?
Dr. Chris: I’ve gone through this weird roller coaster where COVID initially was like, oh God, what do we do? How do we protect the business? How do we still provide services? I got super excited about that. I was just so drawn into we got to figure this out. Here we go. These are the systems. This is what we’re going to [00:46:00] do.
And then June came around and I got burnt out, like depressed. And then it was that moment where I was like, dude, I can’t do this anymore. You’re working from home and you get to go upstairs at lunch and see your kids.
And we did this weird thing here at the Barnes house where we implemented nodes, no seed left behind, wherever you seed out of a vegetable at the dinner table that was not eaten, was planted. So we had a jungle growing in our basement and it was so interesting and so ridiculous and so exciting simultaneously that the kids would come downstairs and they’d take the spray bottle and they’d spray the pepper seeds and they’d spray the cucumber seeds.
It was at that moment where I was like, all right man, there’s more to life than work. There’s more to life than this. Sure, you still love it. You still love the clinical side and the business side, but I’m looking out of my basement window right now at my backyard and my golden retrievers running around the outside, I’ve never been able to experience this when I was at the office.
And so the process has been really [00:47:00] interesting. And as you were describing earlier, your primary defense mechanisms come to the service, absolutely, but here we are so let’s pay attention to them.
It’s been super insightful for me. I’ve gone through such a tremendous transformation as a human in the last year, maybe 10 months, but it’s been so cool. COVID can go, it needs to do somewhere else. If I had a gene, I’d take it away in a second, but here it is. There are probably some things to be learned from it.
Dr. Andres: What is it clinically that’s shifted for you and everyone else to that COVID has brought to the surface in terms of what you want to do more of. I know some of you already spoke to this already, but maybe Chris, it seems like, for you, some other clinical work changed.
Dr. Chris: It did on interesting levels. I’m a statistician at my core. I love numbers. I love data. I love looking at graphic. It’s the beautiful mind down here in my basement. Sometimes I’ve got all these graphs all over the place and markers [00:48:00] everywhere but there’s a lack of human interaction in there.
I think that what drew me to the field was that human interaction. I fell into the testing side of things and built a business out of it. And as a result, I neglected what was really driving me to it. There’s something about that human interaction.
As humans, we’re social beings and it’s important for us to make sure we’re figuring out why we’re doing what we’re doing and going almost all therapy from March to November/December was a really good insight for me into what I need to put my energy into.
Dr. Andres: That’s great. Stephanie, what about you? You asked the question, but I’m curious
Dr. Stephanie: I think that what Andres and Chris were both speaking to is that intentionality where you start looking at, what is it that you want to do? Where do you want to focus your energy? How much of it do you want to be your business versus your relationships versus your hobbies?
So right before the pandemic hit, my husband and I changed our schedules so that I [00:49:00] now work Wednesday through Saturday, which is odd, but we go off in our RV, and this way we can book reservations at places that would otherwise be full. And it also switched me to a four-day schedule so that I have these beautiful three days off.
And thinking about choices like that, sometimes you’re like, I’m not sure pandemic is the best time to try it, but there’s something about it that highlights, well, this is what I need to be a thriving human being. And if there’s ever a time that I need to be a thriving human being, it’s during the middle of a pandemic. So it’s been helpful for figuring that out; what do I need in ways that we do all the time for our patients, our families and our friends, but that we don’t always stop and do for ourselves?
Dr. Sharp: I totally agree. It’s been a nice marker or a slap in the face.
Dr. Chris: It all absolutely sucks, but here we [00:50:00] are.
Dr. Sharp: Right. I will say this, Stephanie, I’m an introvert as well, a complete introvert who can fake it when I need to, but it’s been awesome. I’ve never had a ton of close in-person friends as an adult, but I have gotten super close with like my college friends, this group of guys. Our text chains have just been insane in my graduate school group of guy friends.
We’ve gotten super close over the past 10 months and that’s been nice LESSON. It’s like an outlet for my introverted personality, but also at the same time recognizing I do not miss the plans on the weekends and running our kids here and there and what are we going to bring to this potluck [00:51:00] or whatever.
Dr. Chris: Always meatballs.
Dr. Sharp: For the win.
Dr. Andres: Maybe because I’m in LA and we live in a tiny condo, but men, I long for let’s go to the zoo because my kid is going nuts in our little place.
Dr. Sharp: That’s my wife.
Dr. Laura: It’s a hard balance.
Dr. Stephanie: Laura, I could tell that you are an introvert because I follow you on Goodreads and you read 72 books last year.
Dr. Laura: I sure did. I beat my goals.
Dr. Stephanie: It’s amazing. Was your goal like one a week?
Dr. Laura: Yeah, I think it was like 50.
Dr. Sharp: So I have to ask, what are we reading? What are you reading, Laura? What’s everybody reading?
Dr. Laura: Okay, here’s the thing. I don’t retain any of it. I read whatever is popular, whatever’s good. Right now, I finished last night, the Vanishing Twin [00:52:00] which is popular right now. It was pretty good. I’ve read some real duds recently, too. You’ll have that.
Dr. Sharp: You’ll finish a book even if it is a dud?
Dr. Laura: I do.
Dr. Sharp: You are a completest.
Dr. Laura: It started at graduate school.
Dr. Chris: I did not have a similar experience in graduate school, I can tell you that.
Dr. Laura: I know.
Dr. Stephanie: I think it took me until graduate school when I realized that you don’t have to read everything. Nothing bad happens. I’m still not totally convinced, but I’ve heard.
Dr. Sharp: We had a professor our first year who pulled us aside in a way, and if there’s a way to whisper behind your hand as a professor in class, she was like, you don’t have to read all this stuff. It was pretty amazing. You could tell people were falling apart inside in that moment from all these high achieving students, but it was pretty awesome.
Dr. Stephanie: I had a professor once that told me that if you’re not getting B’s, you’re not busy enough. If you’re [00:53:00] getting A’s, you’re working too hard on your academics and not enough on your research. I nearly died of shock. I was like, what grade are you talking about? Nope. So it was traumatic.
Dr. Laura: So if you guys weren’t in psychology, what would you be doing? Well, I know what Chris would be doing.
Dr. Chris: Oh, that’s interesting. I can’t wait to hear that.
Dr. Sharp: What would you guess what Chris would be doing?
Dr. Laura: I think Chris would own a really fancy restaurant with very good quality products, alcohol and exotic food.
Dr. Chris: We’re going to have to talk about that perspective after this, but you’re 50% right. I’ve always wanted to own a restaurant, but I know it’s not a good idea to do that.
Dr. Andres: With your psychology stuff that you could get a meal, get some psychotherapy.
Dr. Chris: What will we call it? If I want a coffee shop, it’ll be [00:54:00] called Bruin Blab Whine N Dine.
Dr. Andres: There we go.
Dr. Chris: It’s deep. Isn’t it?
Dr. Andres: Have you guys read the book, it’s called, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone? It’s a book about a therapist and her experience, but she would have this client that would bring lunch for her every week and they would have their session over lunch. Maybe you could do something like that. That’d be pretty cool. You have what? 15 sessions a week and that’s it, just during meals.
Dr. Chris: If I were to pick a profession other than psychology right now, I’ve actually thought a lot about this, I would be a non-hazardous waste semi-truck driver. Me and my dog would get in the car. We’d take a weekend or not the car, of course, a semi because you got to pull something heavy, but we’d be out and we’d see the world and we’d come, [00:55:00] next weekend it’s the daughter and the next week it’s the son.
It would be mindless effectively. Now, certainly, it’s not mindless, but I think that our work is so hefty that I have such a desire to be out of that space, which is why I grew pepper plants and covered whatever plants. It doesn’t take any effort necessarily, but there’s still effort involved.
Dr. Andres: How about you, Laura? You asked the question?
Dr. Laura: I’ve got two siblings who are air traffic controllers, and that is the life. If I could go back and redo this, I would probably be an air traffic controller.
Dr. Sharp: Can you elaborate on that is the life?
Dr. Andres: You can’t just throw that out there.
Dr. Laura: They get great benefits. They’ve scheduled slacks for the first few years as they get established, they do two hours on, two hours off. So you’re not even working the whole time. [00:56:00] My brother has been furloughed for like the entire pandemic. That’s maybe not the right word, he’s still getting paid. And so that’s what I would like to be doing.
Dr. Sharp: Wow. I perceive that to be a very high-stress job, but maybe I’m wrong.
Dr. Laura: It’s interesting. They’re much more laid back than I am. Like I’m the type A, they’re more the type B people. And they both love it. They’ve had two issues in the center where there’ve been near misses or whatever, but in general, it’s a good job.
Dr. Sharp: Our eyes just got really big, for those listening. Wow. That’s amazing.
Dr. Stephanie: Jeremy, I’m totally curious what you would do if you didn’t do this podcast world?
Dr. Sharp: I would open a running shoe store. Here’s why, because I love running. I run [00:57:00] a lot but I love the idea of helping people. People come in and they’re like, oh, what kind of shoe do I need? And I can totally geek out on different types of shoes and what’s good about them or not good about them, when you want to wear them and what kind of runner you are, and do a little bit of the coaching like you might want to try this and organize little meetups through the running store and stuff.
Dr. Stephanie: So you’d be like a shoe psychologist?
Dr. Sharp: Yes, exactly.
Dr. Stephanie: Chris, I think we met at AACN and for some reason, what I remember about you is your shoes and your socks. Are you also a shoe person?
Dr. Chris: I’m more of a sock person than a shoe person, but I don’t choose socks based on shoes, I choose shoes based on socks.
Dr. Andres: And that’s a motto to live by something.
[00:58:00] Dr. Stephanie: We’re all like thinking you got it. Everybody’s head is mmmh.Dr. Andres: Leave it to Chris to overcomplicate things, trust me.
Dr. Sharp: That’s amazing. Let’s round it out. Andres, what would you do?
Dr. Andres: Oh gosh. When that comes to mind, I used to be a graphic designer and I used to do videography media stuff and I really enjoy it, but not when I’m being paid for it. I don’t know. Maybe there’s too much pressure to turn over a good product, but the thing is, I’m such an extrovert. I love interacting with people.
Since starting the practice, I’ve loved helping other people start practices and stuff like that. So I have no idea what that would be, some business consultant or something like that, but if I was being paid for it, I think that would change everything.
Like what Chris was [00:59:00] saying, the days I just want to just zone out and not think about things too much, I think I would enjoy just computer programming or woodworking, something I could just be in the zone and there’s a clear product that’s done and “correct”. You don’t have to interpret anything. It’s just, you measure it and if it fits, you did a good job.
Dr. Sharp: I also feel pulled to woodworking for some reason. That’s come up many times when I have this conversation with myself.
Dr. Stephanie: A lot of times the product that we create, whether it’s a change in therapy or our reports, we don’t get the dopamine rush of seeing a finished product. And so if things never really get that sense of completion, and then if you have a hobby where you make something and actually get to see it, I think we all probably long for that sometimes of I built this with my hands, and there it [01:00:00] is. We don’t get to see a lot of that in psychology.
Dr. Sharp: It’s so true. So is that why I like things like vacuuming and mowing the lawn where there’s clear documentation of my progress and I know when it’s finished? Is that the dopamine rush?
Dr. Stephanie: No, that’s more just your pathology. No, I’m just kidding.
Dr. Chris: Paging Dr. Freud.
Dr. Stephanie: I have heard a theory that people really like activities that involve tidying up where they could see the tidying and that a lot of our games, not video games really, but are a lot of our other games that we play like pool or bowling or solitaire, you’re making a mess and then seeing it tidy up, you’re seeing the balls dropped down into the pockets or you’re seeing the cards get neatly stacked up. And that there’s something about that, that we evolved to enjoy. So maybe it’s something like [01:01:00] that.
Dr. Sharp: Ooh, I like this.
Dr. Chris: We should put that to the test. We could make a game that you have to just make a mess everywhere, and that’s how you win.
Dr. Sharp: Maybe I’m pushing this too far, but there’s a lot of parallels with testing. We start with this “crazy” mess. We get all this data and then somehow we clean it up and pull it together and create a nice tidy thing maybe.
Dr. Andres: This is The Testing Psychologist podcast, maybe we should go back to that topic.
Dr. Chris: It’s like Block Design, you know you have all this mess and you got to create something neat out of it.
Dr. Sharp: Okay, there we go.
Dr. Chris: Thank you.
Dr. Andres: Jumping off that, this gets really nerdy now, I think this is one of the questions we were thinking about, what kind of measures do you think are lacking that you would want someone to create, content [01:02:00] PAR and contains Pearson?
Dr. Sharp: Let’s take a quick break to hear from our featured partner.
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All right, let’s get back to the podcast.
Dr. Chris: I don’t see the other p-word. [01:03:00] Well, never mind, we’ll talk about that later also. The one thing that I’d love to see and its prompts exist, I’m just not that savvy to really realize it does, is performance and performance validation all at the same time. How can you do a CPT and some sort of PVT simultaneously? How do you bleed those two together?
That’s if I could have my witches brew, that’d be what I do because I feel like it does exist. There’s just not a tremendous amount of data necessarily to support it. Because when I give a CPT3, I can tell by watching someone if they’re tanking it, but the data’s still is crazy.
Dr. Stephanie: I think Bob Bilder who does some talks on neuropsychology 3.0, talks a lot about the data that we’re throwing away, the information that we could be getting from our tests that were not the [01:04:00] timescale type things, the patterns of responding that really could be incredibly valuable that not just making new tools, but making our current ones work better.
I think also they’re thinking about this for the D-KEFS 3.0 as well. I’m fascinated by those topics but we’ve reached the limit of my knowledge about them.
Dr. Sharp: There are two good NavNeuro podcasts on that whole domain. I was thinking along the same lines. I remember them talking about that with D-KEFS 2.0, is they’re trying because it’s all digital. Everything’s happening electronically. So I think they’re trying to build that stuff in where they’re looking at all those little latencies and behaviors that we just can’t track just by the naked eye or whatever. I think we’re moving in that direction.
Dr. Chris: It raises an interesting point between clinical intuition and [01:05:00] data. As a clinician, we can sit and observe things and we can see things, and there are certainly patterns there, but those patterns are so idiosyncratic. So it’s just interesting to think about how do we blend clinical intuition with performance, with data. That’s where my brain just goes a little bit crazy, and I’m not smart enough to develop any of those things.
Dr. Sharp: Let me ask you all a question. This is related and then we can steer back if it takes us in a crazy direction. I’ve been contacted by someone who’s trying to develop a report writing software. So the question is, do you think we will ever truly have report writing software that can synthesize our interpretation summary, the observations, the nuances, anything that can ever actually do that part? Do you think it’s possible?
Dr. Chris: I think anything’s possible if the probability of it, depending on what you want and the nuance you [01:06:00] want to really demonstrate that that’s one thing.
Dr. Stephanie: I don’t need software because I’m just going to give all my reports to Laura now because I heard she can get them done while watching a TV show. There’s a lot of report writing software out there that people try to develop themselves and it ends up being expensive and hard because we actually do a lot when we’re interpreting the data.
I think all of us who write reports have had a dream of coming up with some sort of software that can get it from our heads onto the paper, and then it turns out like, wow, there’s a lot in our heads. And so I’m waiting for the chip that they put in my eyeball. I think that’s when things are really going to change.
Dr. Sharp: Are you vaccinated yet, then you should have gotten over with that. Oh, sorry.
Dr. Stephanie: Maybe with the second shot.
Dr. Sharp: Was that too much. Sorry.
Dr. Laura: I will say I have tried [01:07:00] probably four or five different report writing types of software out there and spent a ton of money on these things, and lots of time trying to make it fit my style and how I want things and to customize, and nothing has ever stuck. It’s very sad.
Dr. Sharp: I’m in the same boat.
Dr. Andres: Just to jump on that, this goes back to the graduate school thing because this is closer to me because of my recent past, but the idea that there’s a right way to write a report, we’ve all been taught the research paper style and I think you did a few podcasts on this, Jeremy, that’s what all this software is about. There’s a right way to do this. You can put it in some software to reproduce it, but that’s not the way we look at data at all.
[01:08:00] I would even argue that we’re doing wrong if that comes to that point because we have to rethink like, okay, what is the client hiring us for then? It’s not necessarily the report but the interpretation of it. Our understanding; making it make sense for them.And that’s always a struggle for me. That’s always going to linger there for me, like, this doesn’t feel like what I was taught in graduate school. I’m with Chris here, like maybe there’s one day there’s going to be software so smart, it can figure that out for us. Like okay, this is your voice. I just can’t imagine it right now or that it would be useful.
Dr. Chris: My response is that we can create it individually, but we can’t create it in mass. I use technology to write my stuff really quickly, but it’s not going to sound like Laura’s report or Jeremy’s report or anyone else’s report.
I think that what we can do, and I [01:09:00] love technology. I spend way too much time just researching it and it’s probably counterproductive, to be honest, but identifying ways to do what you need to do and the way that you need to do it, and then just tweaking it along the way instead of saying, this is going to be the way that it is and therefore this is the way that it needs to be.
Dr. Sharp: That makes sense.
Dr. Andres: What kind of software are you using?
Dr. Chris: I just leverage Google. I use Google Form Builder. There was someone in the group that had a thing for a while and I totally pilfered most of it from her.
Dr. Sharp: I think that was Rebecca.
Dr. Chris: Thanks, Rebecca. I hope she cashed my cheque. It was mind-blowing to me. It was the best money I ever spent, but then you go in there and you tweak it along the way. And so I can go in there now. I want to say elevations here, elevations there and I think it means this. And then I put my cursor somewhere and dictate the rest of it. And that’s been the biggest game-changer for me going from very technical reporting to more [01:10:00] narrative style reporting.
Dr. Stephanie: I think the right use of technology is to do the psychometrist part, writing the background part that you don’t necessarily need to interpret, getting better data from our patients, maybe using machine learning, that kind of thing but then I think we’ll always, as humans, will be necessary for the part where we’re giving the family a new story or helping them understand their child or adult in a different way, or helping a person process something about themselves that they’re not comfortable with. I think we’ll always be necessary for that part. Luckily we can’t be replaced by robots for that part I hope.
Dr. Sharp: I was listening to, I forgot which podcast it was and it was like, is your job going to be replaced by AI? I was like, no way. And they said, come in after the break. [01:11:00] The A.I. Therapist. The VR is developing this where the sensors will read your emotions and go, hey, I sense that you’re feeling anxiety right now. Let’s talk about that.
And then once in the VA, because you have these people in the military where there’s a lot of stigmas, and so it’s so much easier to talk to a machine about it than to another human. A lot of thoughts about that, but it’s awesome
Dr. Sharp: I got really scared. Maybe two years ago, I saw some research around how people actually prefer a robot physician that talks like a normal person to a real physician in the majority of cases or something crazy. I don’t know. Stephanie, you’re nodding. I don’t know if you’ve seen that.
Dr. Stephanie: That’s true that people actually do like talking to a robot about these things or [01:12:00] chatbots. Ever since that first chatbot, ELIZA, people have been really excited about it. There’s 99% invisible about it. You can put it in the show notes. You should definitely listen to it. It’s fantastic.
People like talking without that human connection about scary, difficult things, but I think they also need to talk to a human about those scary, difficult things. And so you can get some benefit from that and you might even need to talk to yourself or an animal or a robot first, and then do the harder work of actually connecting with another person. I’m hopeful that that won’t necessarily all be replaced by robots.
Dr. Chris: Well, maybe the robot is the exposure therapy to the true experience. It’s like they’re one of those steps into it. It’s like let’s break the ice here. It’s not as scary as you think it is or maybe it is, but you at least get some data at that point, and there you go.
[01:13:00] Dr. Sharp: Yeah, related but a little bit different. I’m super excited. I’m going to be talking with a two guys who are doing research into VR assessment. I’m not sure exactly what that even looks like, but that’s cool. So that’s out there too. I just love technology and seeing how it’s going to help and aid us in what we do.Dr. Andres: It makes a lot of sense for ADHD assessment because we talk about ecological validity with our CPTs and you would really want to simulate a classroom environment. The VR stuff is where you might want to go.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. I think about older adults as well. There’s so much.
Dr. Stephanie: Like watching people actually grocery shop or people say hell is watching someone else pack for a vacation because they’re doing it the opposite way that you would do it. I think that would be such a great test. Bring someone in a VR environment, watch them pack for a vacation. And [01:14:00] then I would know everything I need to know.
Dr. Laura: That’s loops back to what you were asking about what measures we would love to see and that’s something that I find lacking in basic ADHD screeners. Everything is so obvious. Like, do you have problems doing this? Yes, of course, I do. I have problems with all of these things. And so finding some way to measure how it actually impacts life, what that looks like, that would be really cool.
Dr. Sharp: I totally agree. I would love a good writing assessment. I don’t know that we have a great one. I haven’t used the FAW though, but I hear, I don’t know, it’s supposed to be better.
What else do we need? Oh, I have a random question. I know some of y’all, at least two of you use Trails-X, right? Why do you like Trails-X? How is it different than the other [01:15:00] stuff that’s already out there?
Dr. Andres: Because of this X in the title, it sounds cool.
Dr. Stephanie: I was literally thinking the same thing. That’s it?
Dr. Chris: It’s the X factor, Jeremy.
Dr. Stephanie: Are you familiar with the test?
Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Laura showed it to me back at AACN.
Dr. Laura: What did I say then? Because that’s what I meant. I can’t remember because I haven’t used it in so long.
Dr. Stephanie: It allows people to start wherever they want to start. And then there’s a goal to meet where they have to try and connect as many circles as they can following some rules. And so they start and have to come up with a plan and you’re assessing their accuracy and their speed, and getting a sense of that speed-accuracy trade-off, how well they can maintain set, how well they can come up with a plan. In my mind, the closest analog to it is the tower.
Dr. Sharp: I think that’s what I asked Laura back [01:16:00] then. I was like, this is a tower, but on paper with circles.
Dr. Stephanie: Exactly. Kids really like doing it, which is amazing. It’s pretty fast. Sometimes if you don’t want to give Tower of London in that day or are already doing some other trail tasks or want two different measures of that, I find it really helpful to see that.
Like all of our tests, it’s not incredibly sensitive in the sense that kids are developing this skill. So they usually score in the average range on it, but when they do, it’s pretty spectacular. It’s like when you’re doing the Tower of London and a kid does not score well on it, and you’re like, oh, I could see exactly what the problem is. So I find Trails-X the same way when kids don’t do well on it. It’s pretty notable.
Dr. Andres: As you’re saying that I’m thinking about, this comes up all the time in the Facebook group about how the [01:17:00] sensitivity of tests and things like that, I don’t know what the question is here, but then I’m just thinking about how a lot of times we use these tests because we either our supervisor introduced us to it, or we were always… You said, we’re not even sure they’re good measures of what we’re wanting to do.
Dr. Sharp: The question that comes up for me, somebody asked me this question. I forget who it was. It was a few months ago; about how do we make sense of this idea? This is something we don’t talk about a whole lot, but we give all these tests and then we extrapolate to the real world. How does that even happen? Why would we feel justified to do that? What is happening in that black box between testing, recommendations and the real [01:18:00] world that we can do that? Do y’all have thoughts on that?
Dr. Chris: I think the scary part is many of us don’t necessarily know, and there’s just this art piece of it. This is being a little bit vulnerable here, but just think about coming out of graduate school. Well, I’m using these tests because, and this score means blah, and I’m going to make this story around this.
And then we have some degree behind us that says, well, this is the truth. And then people believe us. And sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t, but yet there’s this weird thing that exists in that black box that it certainly warrants examination on a clinician’s piece.
That’s an examination I’ve been through myself, which I mentioned earlier. I wake up with panic attacks every once in a while. That’s when that stuff gets activated. It’s like, oh my God, I didn’t do this or I should’ve done this, but there’s this weird spot that exists, that creates so much tension, anxiety, all these things as a clinician that we just have to work ourselves through.
[01:19:00] Dr. Andres: As you’re saying that, Chris, I love controversial topics now that we’re over an hour in, but it reminds me of that whole discussion about scattered doesn’t matter. It comes up every now and then in the Facebook group. I don’t know if we want to go there, but then just the tension of how do we interpret scores and all that stuff.I’m curious what comes up for you guys as I mention that because I got that a lot working with graduate students, wait, so is this significant? Is it not? This professor saying yes, this one’s saying no. Usually, my answer is maybe, sometimes, depends. What do you think?
Dr. Stephanie: I think that’s so hard because I think most of us who get into this profession were good students who wanted to do the right thing. We were probably even attracted to the idea of assessment because then you’d have [01:20:00] numbers that told you, oh, you’re getting the right answer.
And then we start using these tests and start realizing, oh, these tests are a bunch of hammers when I really was hoping it was like a jeweler’s toolkit. It’s hard and messy. We’re also dealing with messy people and a messy diagnostic system. And then it turns out that most of us, 5, 10 years in start realizing, wow, there are no clear answers to any of these things.
A lot of it really is art. A lot of the data that we’re getting is not the data on the test. The test says it’s measuring writing, but what part of the brain is that? Is it measuring writing? We start grappling with those issues and then it’s hard to even discuss them.
All we can really do is yell at each other in the Facebook group and occasionally have productive conversations, but it’s tricky [01:21:00] because we all come to this realization and often feel alone in it, and then don’t know what to do because other people seem so confident in their opinions. It’s tricky. There is a lot of art to it.
Dr. Sharp: Laura, could you speak to that a little bit because you do a lot of autism? I don’t put you on the spot, but you do a lot of autism evaluations. I won’t even begin to understand any of that stuff but that’s where it’s tricky. There’s a lot of controversy with the measures and how you even do an autism evaluation. What’s your experience been?
Dr. Laura: It’s the same like we were talking about with ADHD measures. You give someone an autism measure and they have all the things or no, they have none of the things. And so there’s so much digging to find the nuance. And on so many different levels, you’re looking for data that isn’t in the rating scale, that isn’t in the [01:22:00] Tele ASAP. And then trying to put that into words as to, yes, this is why your child needs support, or this is why you don’t quite meet the criteria.
You’ve got some hints of autism or some neuro-diversity, but it’s not quite meeting the threshold. I’ve had people who are so interested and invested and having that diagnosis and people who are so on the other side that you question yourself a lot and you question the data and new question, what you saw or what you thought you saw or how you interpreted what you saw? Stephanie, your whole response made me real anxious.
Dr. Stephanie: Because we want there to be right answers. But given that there isn’t, like if you had to give advice to younger clinicians and help them fast track this process of [01:23:00] realizing that this is a blend of art and science, what would you…
Dr. Chris: I have an immediate reaction to that. I’m shooting from the hip here that validity scales are everything, always pay attention to validity scales, the clinical scales are an important issue. It’s not the data you get; it’s how you get the data.
Dr. Stephanie: Say more about that.
Dr. Chris: There’s something driving performance. If someone bombs some scale on an IQ test. Well, it’s either because they suck at it or because they weren’t paying attention, or because they didn’t sleep that night before.
So numbers are only numbers through the eyes of the interpretation. And that was something that was not taught to me as a graduate student. It was like numbers or numbers. Well, there was a tornado in the middle of the Digit Span and they bombed it. Obviously, they have that deficit. That’s not the case.
And so whenever I’ve worked with interns or students, it’s like, all right, let’s look at the validity scales. Let’s see what this says. We’re not looking at clinical scales ever [01:24:00] until we look at validity scales and behavioral observations are super important.
I think that’s something that’s probably underscored or not necessarily emphasized enough rather in training. It’d be interesting to see what Andres says about that now that he teaches psychological assessment.
Dr. Andres: Well, I’m just thinking about the other extreme. It’s so hard to teach assessment, because everyone, like you guys said, the students want a right answer. Wait, what do you mean there’s this maybe, but I’m thinking about the other extreme where we throw away the data because, when I say we, I do that because I’m perfect, but there’s a tendency for sometimes clinicians go, no, no my gut is telling me this is this diagnosis.
And so there’s confirmation bias. Okay, I’m going to look for all this evidence of borderline personality [01:25:00] even though the MCMI is not elevated. We’re just going to give that diagnosis anyway because that seems to fit. And so that’s my reaction to that. Well, what about when we relied so heavily on the behavioral observations? So I don’t know.
Dr. Chris: I think also where the interview is so important too. The data should support your hypothesis after the interview. And so your interview drives those hypotheses and there should be some recognition of that there’s complete bias as you’re absolutely bringing to the attention involved in all of those hypotheses.
Dr. Stephanie: Chris and Andres, I think you guys are bringing up, the Erickson used to have this concept, or did have this concept of disciplined subjectivity, that this is a subjective thing that we’re doing, but that there could be more disciplined ways that we’re doing it. We could be looking for repetition, [01:26:00] singularity, and representativeness of the subjective data that we’re getting.
So when you get a behavioral observation or someone does something unusual, we could be teaching our students to look for repetition of that theme or to look for the singularity of that particular behavior. Like if it’s that they’re talking to something internal, you probably only need to see at once to know what that means.
And that we could be helping people understand that we get a lot of data and it’s not all numbers, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t data that could be in a disciplined way, looked at and considered. I think we’ve missed out on some of that in our drive to keep adding more and more tests.
Dr. Sharp: That’s a good point. I think one of the things that helped me along the way was realizing that the answer can be maybe [01:27:00] fried. That you don’t have to arrive at two DSM-5 ICD-10 diagnostic codes with a clear recommendation. You can say, I don’t know, this is complex, let’s check it out in a year. So I’m getting back to the advice piece but to give someone the advice it’s okay to not know. And so maybe we’ll reassess.
Dr. Laura: And that it’s okay for somebody to be mad at you too.
Dr. Chris: It’s so interesting that you bring that up, Jeremy. I got records request yesterday and I dig through my clinical notes. I pulled up my own personal notes and diagnostically, it was like, don’t know yet. End of feedback, don’t know yet. I was like, wait, you said what? But we didn’t know, there were more questions raised than answers provided and that’s okay.
Dr. Sharp: Sure.
Dr. Stephanie: And sometimes that drive for questions actually comes from us. The parents probably don’t necessarily care [01:28:00] exactly what DSM diagnosis or ICD-10 diagnosis we’re providing. We pretend the referral question is diagnosis so that we can say, oh, it’s ADHD, and here’s your cut-and-paste list of ADHD recommendations, but that’s not usually why families or individuals come to see us. They actually have different questions like, how do I get my kid out of the house in the morning?
You don’t necessarily need to know the right answer for what diagnosis it is to be able to actually provide really useful, helpful information based on the data you get that could help with that question.
Dr. Andres: I’m going to dive into more controversy. Maybe it’s not controversial. Controversy for us.
Dr. Chris: For those of you not watching, everyone just took a very deep breath, myself included.
Dr. Andres: I’m thinking about how this is so complex because I’m seeing more and more of a [01:29:00] movement of people seeking out diagnoses to explain why they’re struggling, especially in the independent. So I get calls to like, look, I could tell in these calls that they’re looking for some specific diagnosis. The ones that come to mind the most are ADHD and autism.
And so there’s a balance because sometimes it’s really affirming while assuring like there’s an answer to why you’ve been struggling and this label, if you will, will help with that but then there’s also the balance of like, well, you’re going through a lot of things but it’s not necessarily ADHD or autism. Then there is a balance of, I don’t know if you’ve encountered this, but how do you manage that where you want to advocate for what the client experience is, at the same [01:30:00] time do right with them and not give them a false diagnosis.
Dr. Laura: I get a lot of people who are self-referred for autism. These are adults who say, I know I have autism. I already identify this way. I just need the official paperwork, kind of thing. I’ve found whether or not I do diagnose autism, there’s always some sort of neurodiversity there. I’m recommending a lot of the same things like check out these websites, read these books. I think this is going to help you frame your life within the parameters of neurodiversity in general.
Vulnerability here, then I feel like a fraud. If I’m giving you the same recommendations that I’m giving someone who I did diagnose with autism, why am [01:31:00] I not calling this autism? You know what I’m saying? I don’t know.
Dr. Stephanie: I think that in some ways we’ve also started to train our patients, our clients, to ask the wrong question. You guys might know I’m obsessed with this idea of the secret question that people bring in. I don’t think their secret question is necessary, do I have autism? It’s more like, is it my fault that life is so hard? Is there something wrong with me? Am I too much or not enough for other people?
We are replacing those hard questions with this seemingly easier question of, do I have autism? We could probably speak to those bigger questions in ways that are actually more helpful, especially if the answer is no, you don’t have this diagnosis that you thought you did, or yes, you do have a diagnosis, but it’s not the one you thought it was.
Those have the potential to be really activating for the person because it’s not what they wanted to [01:32:00] hear, but if we could get underneath and speak to it’s not your fault, life really is hard. You do have some things that make it more challenging, and there are ways that you can help while still accepting yourself. If we could speak to those questions instead of replacing them with the easier question of, do I have diagnosis X check box, yes/no?
Dr. Chris: That’s the classic example of responding to process over content. That’s drilled in first year of graduate school; process over content. It’s not what they say, it’s what they’re really saying. I think we have to ask ourselves what our role really is in this situation.
From a business perspective, what are you selling? You’re selling answers, you’re selling illumination, you’re selling something, but there’s a way to do this very ethically and clinically, and we can use our various specialized skills to accomplish that.
Dr. Stephanie: Where did you go to school that you got the emphasis of process over content? That’s amazing.
[01:33:00] Dr. Chris: I went to Illinois School of Professional Psychology. They are no longer in existence, by the way. Lots of drama last year over that school. It was AP accredited all the time. We’ll fall back on that.Dr. Stephanie: I feel like my program was just content, content, content.
Dr. Chris: You went to Vermont. Is that true?
Dr. Stephanie: I did. The University of Vermont.
Dr. Chris: I went through this weird process where I went to Western Michigan undergraduate which is behavioral. You are basically Skinner’s kid when you come out of that place. And then I went to Illinois School, which is super. You can do clients there, you can do psychoanalytic, you can do cognitive-behavioral, which was still like not behavioral. It was very cognitive.
It was a transition. It was so interesting. Very good, nonetheless. You come out of Western as a mini genius in behaviorism at then know nothing about anything else. So it was a good experience.
Dr. Andres: So rewinding a little bit. I hope it’s [01:34:00] okay.
Dr. Sharp: It is. You’re safe here, safe place.
Dr. Andres: The topic of neurodiversity or just because you brought it up, that fascinates. It fascinates me because, I appreciate the discussions you’ve had on the podcast about it, Jeremy, and because that was a new thing to me. I don’t really have a question here. This is just me talking.
I have a colleague who described it as being able to advocate for neurodiverse people as a social justice issue.
I thought that was interesting. I stopped to reflect on it and see for my own understanding of it and things like that. I’m curious about this movement if you will, and what’s you guys’ thoughts on it. [01:35:00] Even as I’m saying that because there’s a social justice tie to it.
I’m already catching myself like, well, can we say? I’m always interested in the things we “can’t” talk about in our society. As a therapist, I’m like, let’s talk about the things you can’t talk about, but yet there’s a lot of that now. We can’t talk about these things but I think that’s where we grow. So I’m curious what comes up for you guys in terms of that controversy if you will, and if it leading to other questions of diversity and things like that.
Dr. Sharp: I just want to acknowledge since people are being vulnerable here, that whenever this stuff comes up, I get anxious.
Dr. Stephanie: I was seriously thinking, who invited Andres?
Dr. Chris: Zoom in.
Dr. Sharp: Stop what, internet? Can you help me [01:36:00] out?
Dr. Stephanie: I’m breaking out. I’m going through a tunnel.
Dr. Andres: It’s fine. Things that’s so tricky about these Facebook groups. Social media is that sure. In-person, the debates I see about any of these topics, we would never talk that to someone face to face.
I’ll disclose, politically I’m more left-leaning, liberal but my clients who are conservative, I have some of the best conversations with them because we treat each other like people, and then there’s a deeper understanding, but yet if we were interacting on social media, it would be like, no, you’re a racist, you’re Marxist, stuff like that. And then it goes nowhere.
So I’m always fascinated about these long-form discussions about these things that really need a lot more time and attention. I think it’s a shame that we feel anxious about it.
Dr. Chris: I think we get anxious about it because we’re not used to opening up [01:37:00] space to alternative hypotheses. We walk through our lives with our own narrative and our own CBT stuff, but we’re not willing to entertain necessarily contradictory evidence. And so we’re unwilling to open up space globally for contradictory evidence.
In a situation like this, here we are on our Zoom and we’re going to be podcasted to the entire world here soon being incredibly vulnerable, but there’s still this place where there’s this conservatism in terms of what we’re willing to experience, what we’re willing to entertain as hypotheses, what we’re willing to even share with the world.
But there’s something about that, that’s interesting. And that thing that’s interesting is why do we do this? Because it’s playing out in our clinical world, it’s playing out in our social world, is playing out in our relationships. It’s playing out everywhere. And so why do we offer opportunities like this to be safe whereas other opportunities are [01:38:00] not. I think it’s because of the space that we keep for that. Are we willing to entertain it and entertain ourselves?
Dr. Stephanie: I think a lot of us really struggle with imposter syndrome. I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn with saying that a lot of us have really heavy, we’re making really heavy decisions for families or for individuals. The idea of being wrong is really scary.
And so when you bring up a new area or a new way of thinking, and we have to think about, well, maybe I’ve been thinking about this wrong the whole time, maybe I’m still thinking about it wrong, maybe these other people who are my colleagues are wrong, that brings up a lot.
It’s hard for all of us to realize that we’re making mistakes a lot and that’s okay. That’s not really something that I learned in my training, that I could make mistakes. I can find all the mistakes [01:39:00] in my colleague’s works pretty easily, but the idea that I’m constantly talking about things wrong or thinking about things wrong or getting it wrong is hard.
And when you bring up something like neurodiversity, which is a different way of thinking, well, then somebody is wrong here. And it might be me and that’s a pretty uncomfortable place that I don’t always want to spend all my time.
Dr. Sharp: It’s a great point. I want to just be explicit and say that I feel we have to talk about it. It is very hard, but we owe it to ourselves and really to everybody else to talk through these things. Neurodiversity, social justice, inclusion, whatever heading you want to put on that conversation, because those conversations have been either ignored or censored or whatever for so long.
We [01:40:00] have to find a way to do it. I don’t know how to do that. I do it wrong and I get nervous when I think about doing it but I think we have to somehow.
Dr. Chris: That’s an interesting point, Jeremy. I was involved in a group this summer and we were all clinicians, and there was one clinician in there that was very diversity-focused. That was her thing and she’s incredible at it.
And my reflection on that moment was, that made me nervous. Why was I so anxious for 90 minutes about this thing, leading up to it, experiencing it, and afterward. And here I am, a white dude, and so I have all this extra stuff that’s involved in all of this, and it was just so interesting to me.
After some reflection, it’s like, man, how do I play this out clinically? How do I play this out neurodiversity? How do I play this out in all these ways? These are all great questions as long as we’re not judging ourselves, that we just continue to ask.
Dr. Andres: I’ll just be [01:41:00] clear, I do judge myself. I’m like, I need to know this stuff, seriously. Just being straightforward, I feel a lot of responsibility and Laura, you share some of this as a moderator of our group to either take a stand somehow or know how to talk about it or police the way other people talk about it. I’m like, I don’t have those skills. I think we need to be talking about it, but as far as shaping how others do it, that’s really challenging because I’m still figuring it out myself.
Dr. Laura: And language changes so fast and keeping up, one of the questions that was posed here was how are you keeping up and staying connected with the field and how do you keep up with the research? And that is so challenging. Unless you have the personal experience, you’re living as others or [01:42:00] you’re completely invested in it, and that’s the only thing that you’re doing with your time is speaking to those populations or working with those populations, that’s so hard and you don’t want to be judged.
Somebody in the Facebook group had posted something where they said, what am I supposed to do retroactively about like the language I’ve used in the past? How am I not going to get judged for what I’ve already said? And that’s so hard.
Dr. Sharp: Sure. Just speaking for myself and I am obviously a white guy who’s has a lot of privilege in this world. I have come to the place where it’s like, I just know that I always have to keep it front and center somehow. So there’s always like a book in my rotation, or that podcast, I’m listening to, or that audiobook on the way to work or whatever is something to do daily.
It just has to be like a daily thing because otherwise, I will forget and that’s really shitty, [01:43:00] but that is the way that my brain works because of how I’ve grown up and what I was born into and all that nonsense. So that’s, for me, the thing that has to happen is just always be thinking about it somehow and slowly working through it and having these conversations and willing to make mistakes.
Dr. Stephanie: The privileged behind privileges is not having to think about it. And so if you keep going and not thinking about it, you’re slipping back into the very problem.
Dr. Sharp: It’s a small step, but for me, it’s like the privilege is to not have to think about it. So I’m going to make sure I’m thinking about it in this very deliberate way. I don’t know if it’s the right way or not, but it’s a way.
Dr. Andres: As you guys said that 2020 was such a big year to bring these conversations front and center. I’m curious how it’s shifted maybe the way you’ve [01:44:00] practiced if it has.
Dr. Stephanie: What I’ve been trying to focus on is relevance of our work, trying to make it more practical, understandable, useful and real in the lives of whoever I’m working with the idea that I might get the language or the diagnosis wrong.
I hope when I look back on my reports from five years ago or 10 years from now, when I look back on my reports that I’m embarrassed by some of the things in them, because that will mean I’ve grown, but I hope that the meaning of it, the usefulness of it, the understandability of it, the relevance of it will make up for the fact that I’m getting some of that other stuff wrong despite my best intentions.
Dr. Sharp: I like that. You’ve always been an advocate for readability even on a simple level, like writing where people can read it and being [01:45:00] useful. That’s a big step. Not writing to people of our education level and assume that everybody is there.
Dr. Stephanie: Right. Our education level, our level of privilege, our level of all of the gifts that we have so that we’re not just writing to each other. And that happened because I looked back on my old reports and was like, whoa, I can’t read this.
Dr. Sharp: Totally.
Dr. Andres: As you say that, one of the things that come up for me a lot of times when these conversations come up is, A lot of time it’s not social media. Just thinking about how it’s so easy one person declaring that there’s a right answer for these things.
If I could change anything about our graduate programs is [01:46:00] how we talk about diversity. Typically, it’s like some white male professor telling us how to be diverse. I always thought that was interesting. And telling us the right way to do it.
I’m remembering one of our guest speakers in class, it was a discussion about diversity. And then talking about who are your people? And then the guy looks right at me and goes, who would you say are your people, Andres?
Everyone knows exactly what he’s talking about, but he didn’t say it. So I was like, I’m going to mess with him a little bit. I’m a religious person. So my people are people who go to my church. Clearly, it wasn’t the answer he wanted.
So then he was like, what about you? Turning to another student. [01:47:00] I love how you guys are talking about this. We don’t have answers for this. There’s no textbook on how to do this. And you go to 10 years from now, the way we’re talking about these things that are going to be wrong, they’re going to sound wrong and that’s okay but that’s frustrating for us. We also don’t want to offend anyone.
Dr. Stephanie: That’s the dialectic that we live in. We’re all trying to get it right but sticking by the status quo historically has never been the right answer. Here we go.
Dr. Sharp: Yes. That’s such a good point. I feel we have had an amazing discussion. It’s hard to cut this off, honestly, but I know we’re getting close time wise here. I wonder if we might close with just some thoughts on what are you working toward? How are you hoping to get [01:48:00] better? What’s keeping you going over the next few months or years or whatever it is, what’s exciting for you right now?
Dr. Laura: I am about to do the therapeutic assessment training. And so I’m very excited about that. I’m hoping it’ll bring a new lens, some new ideas and I can be more like Stephanie someday.
Dr. Stephanie: That’s sweet. That’s so exciting. Are you doing that with Raja?
Dr. Laura: Yes.
Dr. Sharp: One of my psychologists is going to be there. If you see her online, her name is Jocelyn.
Dr. Laura: Awesome.
Dr. Sharp: That’s exciting.
Dr. Andres: Being new to this thing, I’m working on my practice, building it, that’s exciting to me, connecting with people who are starting off too. I’m like [01:49:00] Chris where I love systems and trying to spend 30 hours trying to be efficient. We’re just funny. That’s for me, but then just rethinking how we do all our work. COVID has really challenged me. The traditional way of doing things has completely shifted, and to rethink that.
Dr. Sharp: Super cool. Chris, you got anything on your radar?
Dr. Chris: What I’m going to do nothing for a while. I’m taking the first two weeks of March off. This year has been incredibly difficult on so many levels. And so I’m trying to work from the abundance mindset where I can take two weeks off and it’s going to be okay. It’s time to regroup and fill the batteries back up. And so I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next 12 months, but I know what’s going to happen in the first two weeks of March, and that is nothing.
Dr. Laura: Do you have vegetables to eat from your garden?
[01:50:00] Dr. Chris: I will buy them and also plant them because that experiment did not go as planned, by the way. They were fun to talk to and sing to every once in a while. How about you, Stephanie?Dr. Stephanie: My passion project right now is I’m going to be presenting on report writing at ABPN in April. It’s going to be three hours, which is both ways too long for anyone’s attention span, but also way too short to cover such a big topic. So it’s like consuming all of my thoughts right now. So if anybody listening has questions that they would love to hear about or things they didn’t learn about or pain points that they have, please send them my way so that I can make sure that the talk is really relevant to the people who might actually attend.
Dr. Sharp: That’s cool. I saw that on the program. I was like, whoa. I cheered out loud.
Dr. Stephanie: Thank you. I heard it all the way.
[01:51:00] Dr. Sharp: I love that. It’s been cool. I’ve made a recommitment to being deliberate in what I’m doing. So I did a ton of research on daily journals that keep you accountable, accountability sort of things, and settled on one. And it’s been awesome. I write out my ideas and goals for the day and plan by the week and by the quarter and all that stuff. So I made a recommitment to do that.Dr. Stephanie: You’re going to do a podcast about that, I hope. That’ll be the next business one. That sounds really neat.
Dr. Sharp: This has been amazing. Thank you all for sitting down for two hours and talking through all of this. I hope that it’s been helpful for folks. If nothing else, it has been a lovely way [01:52:00] to spend the morning and a good way to connect with colleagues and friends. So, thank you all so much.
Okay, everyone. Thank you as always for tuning into this episode. Like I said, this is the first time that I’ve tried this format. So please shoot me a message. Let me know how you liked the happy hour format. If there are any topics that you’d like to see discussed and anything else that comes to mind, any reactions to this new format. I really had a good time. I can’t say that enough. So big thanks to all of my guests who came on today. I hope that we can do it again.
If you’re a beginner practice owner or someone who is looking to launch their practice in 2021, I would invite you to check out the beginner practice mastermind group, which is a group coaching experience just for [01:53:00] folks who are launching their practices. It’s going to start in March 11th.
And this is a cohort-based experience where you’ll go through this together with five or six other psychologists who are in the same stage of practice. It’s a group where we will hold you accountable and give you support as you launch your practice and set some goals for yourself and hopefully reach those goals. If you are interested, you can schedule a pre-group phone call to check out the fit by going to thetestingpsychologist.com/beginner.
As always, thank you so much for listening. Hope you’re all doing well. Take care of yourselves. I’ll talk to you on Thursday.
[01:54:00] The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist’s website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here and similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.